First images of Saturn's rings bring surprises

IT HAS only been a few days, but Cassini's pictures of Saturn's rings have already revealed mysterious structures, and its images of Titan have reversed our ideas about the moon's surface.

Cassini entered Saturn's orbit on 1 July, and came as close to the planet's rings as it ever will. The spacecraft's cameras saw the expected waves and ripples in Saturn's rings caused by the gravity of its moons, and also a host of ringlets with unexpectedly sharp edges - a mystery, as collisions between particles should smooth out the edges. They also found some ring particles that seem to be clumping together. "I don't know what this is. I literally don't have a clue," says Carolyn Porco, head of the imaging team at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado. Saturn's rings are regarded as a model for the disc of gas and dust from which planets formed, so ...

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